Server Version#: 1.23.4.4805
Player Version#: 8.200.26605
Direct Play now seems to MOSTLY not work anymore. I say mostly because it appears to be completely random when it does and doesn’t. The same movie one time might start fine, the next time it’s an eternal loading circle. One time it starts from the first frame, another it the first frame is from 10 seconds into the movie and stays static until the audio caught up with it. Sometimes the “skip intro” feature works fine, another time it freezes playback completely.
With transcoded content there doesn’t seem to be any issue, while Direct play, no matter what specific codecs and formats, all suffer from the same “dice roll” success rate. For direct play the feature to play the next episode either automatically or from the “next episode screen” manually hasn’t worked anymore for some months now, which i was willing to overlook. Now however the app is practically unusable. With less than 50% success rate it’s too much hassle.
The problem persists regardless of whether the TV is connected to the net via wifi or ethernet. All plex provided content like live TV work fine. It’s only my own content. Direct play still works perfectly when streaming to a browser or chromecast. This appears to be an Android TV app issue only.
Edit: I have uninstalled and re-installed the app. Does not solve the problem.
Edit 2: So here’s something interesting! I also have Kodi on this TV, so I installed Plex for Kodi to test that player. And it fails too! Sort of, anyways. Shows the same eternal loading circle and might even trow up a “network too slow” message eventually (it isnt too slow), but when I back out there is my content, happily playing in Kodi’s own media player. There’s something seriously broken with these current plex apps.
I’ve been having the same problems too (Sony XBR55X900F) I’m running the unRAID docker for the server latest update. Using the plex web works perfectly but app barely plays anything just loads forever and the log on the server shows the connection disconnects immediately with reason: connection reset by peer.
Edit: It seems to only be an issue with resuming playback, if it something that is starting from the beginning the issue seems to be less prevalent or gone.
For me the issue is with both starting from the beginning and continuing playback. So far I still haven’t found any consistency when the problem occurs. The same file might work one time and not another. I see nothing useful in the PMS console as to warnings or errors when the playback in the app fails to start.
When I start a video PMS will transmit the video data for several seconds. It then stops, presumably because it transmitted all the data the app would buffer. But since the actual playback never starts, the transmission stops there.
My TV is a Sony XBR-65A8F running Android TV 9. PMS (latest Version) running on a Synology 418play.
Oh, thanks for the tip! MrMC plays all my content flawlessly.
Unfortunately its’ a bit lacking in the way it lets me browse my library, so here’s hoping we’ll get a fix of the official app soon.
Or maybe we can get back the ability to chose an alternative to the ExoPlayer in the app? As far as i know that’s still an option in the mobile app. So why not in the Android TV version?
Thanks for the MrMC suggestion. I downloaded the app on my tv and it immediately let me play stuff that Plex couldn’t play.
With Plex clients, I also have a lot of issues with just randomly not being able to play content. Sometimes monkeying around with the playback quality or play original will make it work, but without any rhyme or reason. It seems completely random. Sometimes playing original quality works, sometimes changing to a different resolution works. Also, if I pause a video, odds are super high that resume will not resume. How can this Plex client app. be so broken. I have two different model Sony TVs and an LG and they all three have less than 25% success rate at playing videos. My laptops and phone play back Plex videos without any problem.
Anyway, I will be using mrmc for now since that at least gets the tv display going. Thanks again for the suggestion.
Yeah no problem, glad it’s working well. But it is a wonder how a commercial product (it’s not even a free open source project) has such a broken app (apps) compared to a third party offering.
I too have a Sony Bravia and whilst it used to work just fine over the last few months the buffering process seems to get worse and worse. Sometimes if I leave it after 15-30 seconds it will start playing but other times it won’t start at all.
I had thought it was an issue on my network or a HW transcoding issue (I use a Synology NAS on DSM7) but every other device - mobile app, windows app on PC - all work flawlessly. So it definitely seems related to the Sony TV.
Doesn’t seem to be related to the size of the file either. Sometimes a 1080p will play fine, but a 720 file will struggle.
